


Numbers and Figures

by Northernflicker, zecretsantamods



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Pre-Canon, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-21 20:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17049746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northernflicker/pseuds/Northernflicker, https://archiveofourown.org/users/zecretsantamods/pseuds/zecretsantamods
Summary: Luna, life on the rhizome before the AB Project, and what a terrible, wonderful thing it is to be able to feel.





	Numbers and Figures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GrumpiestCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrumpiestCat/gifts).



> Happy Holidays!! I was so lucky to be your secret santa! I chose the prompt “Anything from Luna’s POV” I hope you like it!

“Good morning, GTF-DM-L-016”

“….well, you still sound like dial up internet. Don’t worry, we’ll get that fixed. I have great hopes for you this time.”  
  


* * *

  
“Good morning GTF-DM-L-016”

[GOOD MORNING, D O C T O R S I G M A K L I M].”

“Okay. That one actually made sense this time. Good job! Your ophthalmics should be working now, can you open your eyes?”

“It looks strange without the skin. How long until you get that done?”

“I think you’d look weird without your skin too, Akane. Don’t make my robots self conscious.”

“If you say so.”

“016? Do you know where your eyes are?”

“….”

“Okay. Good enough.”  
  


* * *

  
“016, you beautiful creation, I see you looking at me. Finally got those eyes working, huh?

“…”

“GTF-DM-L-016, how are you?”

“[I AM GOOD, DOCTOR SIGMA KLIM.]”

“You don’t even know what good means. You don’t know what anything means! How exciting it must be to be you right now.”

“….”

“GTF-DM-L-016, lift your right hand, please.”

“Good, and now your left.”

“Can you curl your fingers?”

“Count them out loud for me.”

“….Count your fingers out loud for me.”

[ONE. TWO. THREE. FOUR. FIVE. SIX. SEVEN. EIGHT. NINE. TEN. COMPLETE.]

“Good job. Make a fist. Now open your hand. Man, it’s so crazy how I say things and you do it.”

“Hold this for me. What do you think? Is it heavy?”

[YES, DOCTOR SIGMA KLIM].

“That’s right. Hold this in your other hand.”

“Which one is lighter?”

[……]

“Is the one in your left hand lighter or heavier in relation to the other one?”

[LIGHTER, DOCTOR SIGMA KLIM.]

“Okay. Lagomorph, make a note to change that name thing.”

(Compliance.)  
  


* * *

  
“GTF-DM-L-016, who am I?”

[DOCTOR SIGMA KLIM, BUT YOU ASKED ME TO CALL YOU, SIGMA.]

“Hmm. Try again.”

[….SIGMA.]

“Yes! Good job. I see your eyes are following me when I move. Did you notice that?”

[….YES.]

What does it feel like?

[INCREASED RANGE OF VISION.]

“Do you like it?”

[YES.]

“Can you describe what I look like?”

[SFDH -DFSGJF-DGFDHJHDSDS-]

“Hmm. Not quite yet.”  
  


* * *

  
“GTF-DM-”

“Put some skin on that robot, Doctor Klim.”

“I know. I’m working on it.”

“I’m serious.”

“I said I’d do it, okay?”  
  


* * *

  
“GTF-DM-L-016, what’s the weather like?”

[IT IS CURRENTLY 67 DEGREES FARENHEIT INSIDE THE RHIZOME.]

“Akane, can we raise that two degrees– Nevermind. I said nevermind! I wasn’t going to say it, anyway. Leave me alone. Stop looking at me like that.”

“GTF-DM-L-016, want to know a secret? The number is 69. You’ll understand when you’re older.”  
  


* * *

  
“Okay. Look at me.”

“….I don’t know why I made you look so much like her. I mean, I know why I did, because I have to, because that’s how I remember Luna being, but…”

“You didn’t really deserve this, did you? It’s not like you got a choice in the matter. It’s not like any of us here did.”

“You didn’t even get to know her. This necklace, this is hers. Maybe I’ll tell you about it one day. Maybe I’ll tell you everything.”  
  
“…Or maybe not.”

“I guess I was ready for you to look like Luna, huh? But you’re not really Luna yet. And you’re not her either. GTF-DM-L-016, who are you? What’s it like to be you right now?”

“I guess you’d say you can’t wait to find out. Well, if I didn’t know what was going to happen, I guess I would be too.”  
  


* * *

  
“Good news, GTF-DM-L-016! You’ve come along far enough that I think it’s time to give you a proper name. There’s been plenty of robots in this lab, but only one Luna, and I think you’re it. Congratulations.”

[……GOOD?]

“Yep. It’s almost like your birthday. Happy birthday, GTF-DM-L-016.”

[….THANK YOU.]

The man, Sigma, smiles. This is a good reaction. GTF-DM-L-016 is happy.  
  


* * *

  
“Oh, Sigma, she looks–”

“Yeah.”  
  


* * *

  
“Hey there! Can you introduce yourself to my colleague?”

The woman. Greying hair. [AKANE KURASHIKI]. Important, very important.

She opens her mouth. (She. Her mouth her eyes her feet her face her she robot alive alive alive).

[My name is Luna. It’s nice to meet you, AKANE KURASHIKI.]

Ms. Kurashiki looks impressed. She claps Sigma on the back and the two share a grin. Luna feels like she is part of the secret. She smiles, because she knows she is supposed to.  
  


* * *

  
Luna looks at herself. She has pale skin and orange hair and a purple dress and blue eyes and white teeth and pink lips and black pupils and a necklace with a blue bird inside.

Yes!

Here she is, she is her, there is nobody else like her. She has skin and a face and she can walk and talk and she is happy! She is so happy to be able to do these things! She is Luna. Being Luna is a very important thing to be, perhaps the most important thing she’ll ever do.

Sigma is beside her straightening her collar and fixing her hair and Luna knows from all the information she has downloaded that this is something humans do to show affection, she thinks that’s what this is. But she is not jealous of humans and all their chemicals and synapses and things they can do without programming.

She’s Luna, and no one else can do the things she can. She was made for a purpose. She was made to help with the AB Game. It’s a very important project, you see. (What is it, um-)

Sigma seems amused. “Don’t get too excited,” he says, “There’s a lot of work to do outside this lab.”

“Yes, doctor.”

Sigma faces her. His face is tired and worn, skin wrinkled in a way hers will never be able to, but his eye still glows with pride. He looks her over, rough hands glancing over folds in her sleeve, smoothing her clothes to fit her better, positioning her necklace in front of her. She feels like a doll. She knows what a doll is. She knows so many things.

He is so strange and different from her. His skin, leathery and lived in. Raised scars on his knuckles from where he dropped a mug, hairs poking through the skin along his skin, dust and cells and oils. His body is a breathing, organic thing. His lungs, expanding inside his rib cage, his heart, always beating, red and alive inside him. Everything about him is so different from her. She is cold and still, hard machinery and wires that won’t fail her when she needs them. She is sturdy, built to last, and he is not. What a funny thing.

And even the doctor is a bit like hers. His arms and hands, sometimes too technical to seem natural. Little moments of stutters and stalls that remind her more of her own hands than those of a human’s. And his eye, round and intruding and altogether too garring next to his organic one, but she likes it that way. She likes him that way. All those parts of him makes her feel closer to him, in a way. A half robot. And her, a full robot.

His gaze seems to soften when he looks at her. “Alright, then,” he says, “I guess it’s time to put you to work.”  
  


* * *

  
Sometimes she finds herself missing the times when it was just her trying to grasp her own consciousness and understand simple things like who the man was in front of her and how she seemed to know such things. When it seemed to take all she had to just focus on simple things, much less follow orders. Everything is more complicated, but it isn’t a bad thing, the way she is now.

The entire Rhizome seems like second nature to her. Everything seems to be downloaded into her, and she is so in tune with it that it seems unthinkable that it wasn’t made just for her. All it’s rooms and elevators and hallways feel as comfortable to her and she revels in the small discoveries, like Ms. Kurashiki’s favorite type of teas or where the Doctor likes to hides the better rations for himself. All of this has been functioning for long before she was even a thought. The two of them, on the moon working, and now her too.

She feels honored to have been chosen for this role. Whatever they’re working on seems to be of monumental importance, and she’s an important part of it. Her! Some time ago she had not even known how to open her eyes or understand the things she was hearing, and now she was playing a part in an incredible machination of fate.

She hears them talking about it, sometimes, things like people whose names she doesn’t know and apocalypses, and Radical Six (this one she had heard about, she can recite facts about the virus forwards and back, but on one ever asks her to do so.) But more often than not, they talk about The Project.

She knows about that too.  A lot of the work has been done before her creation, and more often than not it’s Mrs. Kurashiki that relies on her for menial tasks. And whenever she asks, Mrs. Kurashiki says she will tell her more when it’s time to do so.

So she spends time taking orders from Mrs. Kurashiki, double checking puzzles and stocking rations and nodding when she is supposed to. Sometimes she won’t see the doctor for days at a time, as he is sequestered in his own labs, and sometimes he hardly seems to notice her at all.

But she’s walking, and she’s alive, and it’s more than she’s ever known to ask for, so she does her best to be helpful and supposes that’s all she can do.

And for a while, that’s all there is to it.  
  


* * *

  
She finds him, as she often does, in the garden. He seems to alternate between B Garden and his labs, and in rare moments such as these, he doesn’t seem too eager to return to any particular thing.

She watches him. B Garden had also come along, in it’s own way, in no small part thanks to her. She finds a simple peace in the place. It is so unlike the rest of the facility, so many parts of it that couldn’t be replicated anywhere else. It’s just another reminder that it’s just the three of them, a little corner of life in this cold gray place.

But life on the Rhizome has been kind to her and so she does her best to return it’s kindness here, in turning the dirt and planting the seeds, and she enjoys the way the mud sticks to her cloths even if it makes the doctor sigh at the sight of her.

But now there isn’t much work left to be done. The tree that had been planted before her creation has grown into a sturdy thing, and it should grow long after any of them, she supposes. That’s what she likes about life. It persists. Even if it is just her and this tree, one day, it should be enough.

The rest of the garden has come along nicely. A shallow pool of water, an intricate laying of tiles below. The grass, soft and thin in the ventilated air. Even the waterfall by the outcrop of rocks is appreciated, in it’s artificial way, and she finds she likes the spray of mist on her face.

Is this what Earth is like? That place that the Doctor and Mrs. Kurashiki mention? Could it be like this all the time?

But it doesn’t matter if it is or not. She’s here, and this place is hers. It was built from the ground up, meant to bring life to the facility, and she appreciates its differences from the rest of the Rhizome. It’s real. And maybe if she stays there long enough, she could be real, too.

It’s quiet. Even the imported air seems stiller somehow, as if out of respect for the meaning this place is entrusted with. Every inch of it is a reminder of what the AB Project is truly for. And so she walks among it, reverent in the silence, a small part of this secluded paradise. Everything from the damp moss on the rocks to the stillness in the air was meant to be here, meant to be alive.

She finds him, as she always does, in B Garden. He’s seated on the bench but his gaze is turned to the side, as if watching something out of the corner of his eye. It’s as if he expects to see a ghost in his peripherals, and for a moment it seems as if he might be as she steps forward into his line of sight.

But the raw expression on his face is smothered after a moment, and he says “Oh, it’s you, Luna.”

“Yes,” She steps away from where she had obstructed his view of the unmarked grave and moves to sit beside him on the bench, smoothing her skirt out in front of her. “I thought I might find you here.”

“You as well,” he says, staring off into the off colored wall, “don’t think we don’t notice you sneaking in here to water the plants. The sprinkler system does that for us, you know.”

“I know,” she says, “I just thought they might get lonely.”

“The plants?”

“Yes, well,” her hand rises up to clutch her necklace. “You did dig up those skunk cabbages just last week.”

He smiles, patiently, “the plants don’t know the difference,” he says, “but I suppose it’s good to have empathy.”

“They’re living things, right?” She tosses him an experimental glance.

“I suppose. But not in the way in which they would have the capacity for emotions.”

“Well,” she stares at her shoes. “You could say I’m not living like that either. But I still feel emotions.”

“That’s right,” he lifts her chin and looks at her as if inspecting her circuits. “You’re much better in that regard. Much better than any seed you could put in the ground.”

She smiles against his loose grip, “Thank you, doctor,” she says.

He draws his hand away, and they lapse into silence. It’s one of the best parts of the B Garden. There aren’t any machines beeping, no engines churning, no gears locking in place. There’s nothing to interrupt silences such as these. She wishes they could stay this way forever, but she knows they cannot.

As if reading her mind, he rises from the bench and stretches, his spine popping at the movement.

“Actually,” he says, “it’s good that I caught you. I have someone I want you to meet.”  
  


* * *

  
And then there’s Kyle.

He is not like her. She had known that when Dr. Klim had explained the situation. He seems like her, at first glance, but underneath that stoic mask is a boy all the same.

Still, the idea of getting to do this is exciting all the same. It’s not what she was built for, per say, but the opportunity is a welcomed change all the same. But still, it’s strange, looking at him.

He is a human, and yet his flat, often bored tone betrays him to more of a robotic sense than even herself, who was programmed to hide such things. She is a machine with a human face, and the boy, Kyle, well…

“Hello, Kyle,” she crouches down and offers him a small smile, “I’m Luna. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Hello,” the boy says, sullenly. From the proximity she can see his eyes through his suit, guarded yet hopeful at the sight of her, and she feels something soft and careful grow inside her at the sight.

Yes. She can do this for him. She can be what he needs her to be. And so she smiles wider. From inside the suit, she can see by the way his corner of his eyes crinkle that he is doing the same.

It’s a wonderful, wonderful thought.  
  


* * *

Kyle does things like hold her hand and ask her questions, and he begs her to tell him stories when she tucks him into bed, and she takes great delight in doing so. And yet the glow in his eyes still catches her off guard, and she finds herself wondering if she could ever look at someone else like that, if she even still has it in her. I

t’s a wonderful thing, to be human. And yet Kyle doesn’t even know how special he is, when he talks asks about where his father is and why Sigma never visits, and the sorrow in her seems to grow with every question asked about the doctor’s absence.

“He cares about you, Kyle,” she says to his sleeping form. “He cares about all of us. I know he does.”

Maybe faith is something programmed into her, or maybe it’s something all on her own, but she can hardly think a harsh thought against the doctor. It’s nothing like the petulant, frustrated sadness in Kyle’s eyes, in the way his hand clenched into fists, in the way his tear stained eyes bore into another closed door.

And so she holds him closer in those moments and though his suit is metallic and cold, she knows that inside he is so much more than that. Maybe even more than Sigma can see. Maybe more than he deserves to.

And so the child fists his hands in her skirt and hides behind her legs, and she teaches him games that she knows are good for his developing brain, and it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing, for as long as it lasts.

And he calls her “mommy,” quietly, as if still yet unsure, and the way she scoops him up in her arms makes them both laugh, and it feels warmer than anything else she could have hoped to create. She is so lucky to fill this roll in his life, and to have him be this for her, this thing she didn’t know she was missing. And for a while it is great fun to be what each other needed, to be able to do this. Because he is small and he needs her, and she needs him too.

And Luna is happy.  
  


* * *

  
She doesn’t really know when it happens. Maybe if she did, it could have been prevented somehow. She could have been more careful, done more to preserve this, or maybe it doesn’t have a thing to do with her. Maybe this is just one of those things that humans do, things they can’t be programmed around or taught to for see.

But it still hurts. And it hurts more that she wasn’t prepared for it, that it happened somehow without her knowledge, and her only tip off that it had happened was Lagomorph’s chattering in the background as he tests out all the puns and the mean streak Sigma had coded into him just that morning.

But even that does nothing to compare to the way something inside her seems to fracture at the sight of Kyle’s eyes, sharp burning with betrayal at the sight of her.

“Go away!” Kyle screams at her through the door he had just slammed and she is still frozen, arm raised to where she had knocked. “Go away! I don’t want to see you anymore!”

Something in this must not compute, and for a moment several responses race through her brain before she says, just loud enough to be audible, “Kyle, please let me in.”

“No!”

Funny enough, a part of her wants to laugh. She wants to ask Sigma if he encoded a sensitivity to rejection in her, if he had thought that far ahead when she was just a pile of wires and screws. If he had known how much this would hurt and then had done it anyway, just so she would know just how much it hurt to be able to feel like this.

“I’m sorry, Kyle,” she tries. He doesn’t know her well enough to tell that the softness in her voice is real, and she doesn’t know if she knows herself well enough for that either.

“Go away,” she hears a thump from where he must have kicked something with his metallic covered foot. “You’re just a robot! I don’t want to see you. He put you up to this, didn’t he?”

“I,” she pauses, “he did, but–”

“You don’t even care about me,” he sobs, “You’re just programmed to feel things. You’re just a stupid robot.”

This isn’t about her. She knows this. She knows from the rawness in his voice that this is about Sigma not caring the way he should, that he thought it fit to fashion a replacement rather than to put any effort into being a parent. This is Sigma’s mistake brought down upon her, but it still hurts as if it has been her own.

“I wanted a real mother,” he repeats, “I thought you were real. Dad tricked me. He lied to me.”

“He didn’t lie,” Luna tries, “He wanted to make you happy, Kyle.”

“No he doesn’t!” Kyle’s voice takes on a shrill quality, “Go away! I don’t ever want to see you again!”

And then he falls silent, angry and brooding in the way he is prone to be. And he doesn’t answer her when she calls or knocks on his door. And he doesn’t answer her the next day, or the next. And so, slowly, the resumes her old activities.

When she reports this to Sigma, he doesn’t even look up from his screen, simply muttering that the child was whiny, and that hurt too. And it hurt to see Sigma not care, and it hurt to see Kyle avoid her, and it hurt to see the way he looked at Mrs. Kurashiki when she visited.  
  
And it hurt even more that she felt this way, that she was able to feel this way. It hurt more than she knew what to do with, and so she sits in B Garden and looks at her reflection and wonders why she was able to feel this way at all.  
  


* * *

  
This feeling inside her has permeated all her wires and plastics. It’s in the places between her metal plates, every corner where emotions were not meant to go, and it seems to weigh her down, somewhat.

She doesn’t really know how the heart she doesn’t have could be so heavy, how she could care so much about being that are so different from herself. She doesn’t know why it matters to her that Kyle doesn’t accept her, that Sigma doesn’t care about his son. In reality, it has nothing to do with her. She was created to help with the AB Project. And this, though important, isn’t it. She wasn’t made to care as deeply as she does. But she carries it with her still.

It’s a careful, tenuous thing, weighing her down like the bird cage on her neck and yet still dragging with every artificial breath she is programmed to take. Everything about her is meant to mimic humanity, and yet Kyle is right. At her core, she is not one of them. She is a mess of parts and programs. She is a thing. And things can be replaced, forgotten.

It had been nice to think she could be one of them. But even if her feelings grow too big for her metal frame, even if she hopes hard enough, she will only ever be what she’s made to. And that hurts her, too. This limitation. The inability to be more than she is.

Perhaps that is the beauty of humanity as well. They can grow and change in ways she will never be able to. And even that hurts more than it should.

She finds herself envying the stillness of B Garden. The doctor was right. The plants don’t feel, and yet she still feels for them. She wonders on the life of every little thing, and it feels like something much bigger for her, much too much for her to handle.

These plants live, but they don’t have to feel. The grass doesn’t know it’s purpose. It just exists. It just is. But she was made to be much bigger than herself, she was born into something that had been in motion years prior. Even when the doctor looks at her, she sometimes gets the sense it’s not her he’s talking to.

She stops walking. She sees the grave off to the side. Tu Fui, Ego Eris, it says, without offering much more as to whom it belongs to. It isn’t like her to have that curiosity, but every sight of the Doctor hunched in front of it makes her at once wonder more of why she was here. She could be anyone. Why this necklace, why this face? Was anything she had now really meant to be hers?

She’s inherited all of it, her orange hair, her big heart. She’s borrowed this necklace just like she’s borrowed the Doctor’s affections, and even he doesn’t want her for it. It should be enough to just have a duty to fulfill. But Lagomorph wasn’t burdened with thought and emotions. It’s only her in this big open space.

And even with the life around her, nothing in this room was meant to exist as it did. Everything was manufactured at the whims of the Doctor and Mrs. Kurashiki. Everything she has, she has to give to them.

“I thought I might find you here.”

She whirls around, caught off guard, “Oh,” she gasps, “I’m so sorry, I was just taking a moment–”

“It’s fine.” Sigma sits on the bench, “I’m also taking a moment.”

She looks at him. She used to feel so close to him, so proud to be one of his creations. He seems older, his hair more gray than black, the wrinkles etched deeply into his skin, deeper than she remembers them being. And yet even with his robotics, she feels more different than she has ever been. It is just another reminder that she is something that time can’t touch.

She sits down cautiously beside him. It isn’t like her to be having such doubts. It wasn’t what she was made to do.

“Doctor, I…” She pauses, unsure of how much she should reveal.

He nods. “You’re not as stoic as you would like to think, Luna,” he says, “in fact, I think it is a virtue of yours.”

She sighs. “Thank you, doctor.”

“You are upset about Kyle, right?” The doctor shrugs, “these things can’t be helped. It should be good for him to learn that he can’t always get what he wants.”

She winces, but can’t find it in her to respond.

He looks over to her, both eyes robotic and unfeeling. “You must think me cold towards the boy. But I’m telling you, it can’t be helped.”

“What do you mean?”

Sigma sighs, “The other versions of….”

She waits, but he does not continue. He seems to be thinking hard on something, and so she grants him that luxury.

“I suppose you could relate to this, Luna,” he says, finally, “You were programmed to do certain things, right? And there are some things you’ve developed on your own. If someone from the future told you that they remembered you being a certain way a year from now, then next year you would want to act that way so that that memory of you could exist for them.”

She clasps her hands together in worried thought.

He continues without noticing. “And so, a year from now, your behavior is already decided. Whether you want to do it or not.”

She mulls it over.  “So you’re cold towards Kyle because you’re programmed to be?”

He looks pained, “Not exactly,” he says, “I suppose there is some free will to it. But even if I wanted to be better, I can’t. Because Kyle needs to have these memories of me in order to act a certain way in the AB Project, when the time comes.”

Something clenches inside of her. “That’s horrible,” she murmurs.

“It is,” he agrees, “Humans are all the same way. There’s no free will to any of it.”

“I…” she watches the fluorescent lights play across the walls of the metal mousetrap they’re in. “I don’t know if I agree, Doctor.”

He smiles, tiredly. “You might, when all of this is said and done. Humans are…determined to believe that they can change things, but every decision they have is already laid out for them. It’s just the illusion of free will that exists. So maybe, in a way, you’re more like us that you thought.”

For a while, the only sound is the vents and the water, all programmed to act a certain way. The whole Rhizome is an organism, breathing when it is supposed to, functioning in the only way it knows how. And yet it does not know that it’s entire purpose has already been planned out, that it will never be more than it is now.  
  
And if humanity is the same way, and if she is the same way, then maybe that’s all there is to it for anybody.

“I like to think there’s more to it than that,” she says, staring off into the garden.

He reaches over to grasp at her necklace, rotating the cage between his fingers,

“Yes,” he says, inspecting the bird within it’s bars. “You would.”

She watches him from the corner of her eyes. The doctor, so elusive and mystifying. She had once thought she had known him well, and was the only one to do so, but the more she learns about the AB Project the less she seems to think that.

No matter how he may care about her, she is a pawn, just the way Kyle is. Who’s to say the way he’s treating her now isn’t because of some future premonition, and not out of a genuine desire to know her?

“You shouldn’t worry about these things,” he says, as if sensing her thoughts, “You shouldn’t worry about a thing, my dear.”

“I try not to,” she admits, as he holds the cage in his hand, “But it’s hard.”

“Yes,” he agrees, gravely, with something in his voice that she can’t quite place as the music box begins to play. “It is hard to care. It’ll hurt you, though I pray that’s not the case. I only ask that you keep doing it. It’ll means more than you know.”

“I will, Doctor.”

He releases her necklace with a weary sigh. “Have you heard the story of Mytyl and Tytyl?”

She has, many times, and they both know it. It’s something she’s required to know, though she doesn’t yet know why.

“Tell me,” he prompts.

And she does.  
  


* * *

  
The doctor was right, she realizes, as her functions shut down, as every bit that made her human slowly falls away. It is hard to care. It’s harder than anything she’s ever had to do. Because deep down, she’s a mess of wires and parts. But deeper inside that, she wants the AB Project to succeed. She wants to live, and she wants others to live as well.

But she wasn’t able to do that. More than half of the participants were dead, and now Sigma had elected to stay with her rather than escape with Quark and Phi. It was a selfish, irrational thing. And yet, she is grateful for it, as she sinks into his lap, as her body grows cold and heavy.

She is grateful for it, as she rests against him with a body that has long since been able to feel his touch. And she says everything she has been instructed to say in this moment, with her tired, raspy voice, and she says things she hasn’t been instructed to say. Like that she’s afraid to die, and…she probably deserves it, too.

But the B Garden is where she loves to be. Even with a Sigma who seems different than the one who had created her, it’s still him. And even if she’s not human, this moment feels like the most she could be.

Maybe in some other world, fate could be kinder to her. It could allow her to stay, and she really, really wants to. And so she hopes Kyle can forgive her for not being what he needed. And she hopes that, if she ever sees the Doctor again, he could forgive her too, for being in this state. But then her body is shut down and the thought is lost. And it was meant to be that way, too ** **.**** He programmed Lagomorph to do that, just like he programmed her to feel it, and so far everything has gone according to plan.  
  
And so she hears him call her name, his voice heavy in her head, and she hears her music box wind down, and the last of her awareness slips away with the chiming of the blue bird and the single fleeting thought that she too could one day be free.


End file.
